‘You’re Dr. Phil.’ TV personality says he joined immigration raids in Chicago for ‘transparency’ – Press Enterprise

Partway through answering questions Sunday during an immigration enforcement blitz in Chicago, a man who appeared to be in federal custody briefly stopped talking when he recognized the man with the Texas accent asking the questions.

“You’re Dr. Phil,” the man said to television personality Phil McGraw, who, while standing alongside federal agents, peppered the man with questions about his citizenship and alleged crimes.

The scene played out not only in Chicago but across the internet Sunday as McGraw and cameras from his Merit TV media platform were embedded with President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan and others from various federal agencies as they began their long-promised immigration action in and around the city this past weekend.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to questions Monday about McGraw’s presence during the enforcement actions or the specifics of interactions with suspects that were disseminated on his platform and social media accounts. But in an interview with Tribune, McGraw, who spoke at a Trump rally just before last year’s election, said he was in Chicago to provide “transparency” for “a very targeted, surgical operation” aimed at people with criminal records who are in the country without legal authorization.

“Transparency is going to be important for people to understand what’s going on and what’s not going on,” McGraw said. “I’ve read a lot of things about sweeping neighborhoods and raiding businesses and even schools and things like that. That is just absolutely untrue. That’s not going on.”

For many others, however, granting largely unrestricted access to a well-known television personality during high-stakes law enforcement encounters raises questions about the propriety of the operation. It also underscores the extent to which Trump — who parlayed his turn as a reality TV star into a political career powered by harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration — relies on spectacle and showmanship to convey his message.

Further blurring of the lines between politics and popular media is likely to be a hallmark of the second Trump administration, as evidenced by his cabinet appointments of former Fox News personalities such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sean Duffy, a former Wisconsin congressman and star of MTV’s “The Real World” tapped to lead the Department of Transportation.

Longtime Chicago immigration attorney Kevin Raica said he was surprised to see McGraw tagging along with federal officials during Sunday’s enforcement actions.

“These are usually law enforcement-only operations,” said Raica, who’s practiced immigration law for 20 years. “Generally, they want to restrict that access because they say it’s law enforcement sensitive and that it could reveal their methods of operation or how they conduct themselves. That it would be unsafe for the people they’re trying to detain.”

Indeed, a former federal law enforcement official who was based in Chicago said he wouldn’t have permitted a TV personality to have cameras rolling during an operation.

“We generally tried to stay out of the media’s attention … for a host of reasons,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized by his current employer to speak to the press.

Those reasons include both safety concerns and “the humiliation issue.”

“We always took great pains to make sure nobody, regardless whether they were a public official, a law enforcement officer, a drug dealer or anybody else, (was) humiliated in a process of an arrest because that creates a whole host of other grievances that could emerge at the scene or down the line,” the former official said.

McGraw, who’s previously interviewed Homan at length, said officials took great care Sunday to ensure safety.

“Their No. 1 priority was safety of everybody involved, including the targets that they were arresting, and they were going to great lengths to make sure that they went about this operation in a way that provided the greatest degree and likelihood of safety for the people that were being arrested as well as the agents that were doing the detaining,” he said.

Still, videos from the incidents, especially those that involved McGraw, were surreal — and questionable.

During the exchange with the man who recognized McGraw as “Dr. Phil,” the TV personality continued asking questions of the man even after he mentions wanting to speak to a lawyer. The clip posted to McGraw’s account on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter, showed the man being questioned stood with his hands behind his back next to a law enforcement official.

Standing at McGraw’s side, Homan said: “This is an example of sanctuary cities, right?” mentioning the policy Chicago and many other large cities have in which city agencies and local law enforcement do not cooperate with federal deportation authorities.

“We’ve got an illegal alien convicted of sex crimes involving children, and he’s walking the streets of Chicago,” Homan continued.

“You’ve been charged with sex crimes with children?” McGraw said.

“Not really,” the man said, shortly before Homan is seen on the video telling agents to “take him in, process him and lock him up.”

The questioning should have stopped as soon as the man mentioned wanting to speak to an attorney, the former federal official said.

“You have to cease and desist and let them get their lawyer,” the former official said.

While he’s “not a lawyer,” McGraw told the Tribune, “I wouldn’t think that would extend to me, but I suppose somebody could certainly ask the lawyers involved if that’s true.”

A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois also raised questions about the exchange.

“It is disturbing that high-level government officials stood idly by as a hand-picked media outlet sensationalized an arrest and attempted to gain admissions from a suspect even after he asked to speak to his lawyer,” ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka wrote in an email. “If the administration thinks this sort of stunt will lend credibility to its operations, it is mistaken.”